The End Page 2

  I like Australia, and I like wallabies.

  I start getting into my own zone, staring out in the darkness, thinking of our op plans, the procedures, the alternative plans if shit goes wrong—it always goes wrong—but other thoughts intrude, too, about this being my last op, and of a certain quiet lake in New Hampshire I want to find one of these days.

  Someplace remote, someplace quiet, someplace where I would never be bothered.

  So that’s what’s going on in my mind about two hours or so later, when the lead pilot breaks in. “Wallaby One, we are feet dry. Approximately forty minutes to drop zone.”

  “Roger that,” I say, and in a practiced move, we all rip off our name badges and drop them to the floor, which is our routine. I gather them up, put them in a mesh bag, and secure it to the chopper’s near bulkhead for later retrieval.

  Then we get ready, like marionettes well trained in our motions, making sure all of our gear is in place, parachutes properly fastened, weapons securely attached. It would be very embarrassing to land in the middle of a free-fire zone with no weapons. My guys carry more than one firearm and are a giving crew, but they would probably draw the line at lending someone a weapon because the person was too stupid to secure his or her own.

  In the crowded main cabin of the Invisible Hawk, I take an extra minute with Borozan, tugging a bit more than I should on her belts and straps, and that earns me a quick smile, which is highly unprofessional, but I decide to be a good sport and let it go.

  “Wallaby One, ninety seconds.”

  “Roger that.”

  I remove my intercom system, retrieve my helmet, and lower and switch on my night vision goggles (or, as I call them, NVGs), mounted on my helmet. One of the crew chiefs moves to the main door, and we line up. We wait. The interior of the chopper—which had been lit by dim red lights to preserve our night vision—goes black, and in a very practiced motion, the crew chief slides open the door, the cold wind knocking us back.

  We wait.

  It’s overcast with no moon but I can make out mountains, hills, and wooded forests below us. Fear leaps into me and I fight it back—my God, you’re going to jump out over this?—and the crew chief makes a one-minute signal with a finger, and we shuffle forward, off to our dark drop.

  Sher is the first one out and the rest of us don’t waste time. In seconds we’re all out in the Serbian night air, and as our chutes deploy, the slamming of the straps and rigging brings back all those muscle memories of previous successful jumps. We’ve jumped over and over again, training with HALO (high altitude, low opening) and HAHO (high altitude, high opening). However, we’ve heard that the Russian friends of the Serbs have new radar and search systems that can detect small objects like us high up in the air, so this is a low jump, and it only allows enough time for the parafoils to open up.

  Since Sher is the lead jumper, he’s guiding us in with compass and night vision gear, and the rest of us stack up above him, one after another. We turn like a corkscrew, descending, and way off to the eastern horizon, there’s yellow-and-red tracer fire all around us. I ignore it. It’s not aimed at us, and it’s too far away to give a crap about.

  But I can’t ignore something else. Below us is our drop zone, a knobby, rock-strewn hilltop that stands out from the surrounding forest, and there should be four parafoil chutes below me, since I was the last one out.

  Yet there are only three.

  Damn mission is under way for twenty seconds and already it’s gone to the shits.

  One by one, we land on the outcropping, flaring out our black chutes, gathering them up, pulling them together, securing our site. The chutes are hidden and I count heads, and sure enough, one is missing.

  It’s Clayton.

  I gather our group together, all of us alert with one knee down. We’re talking but our night-vision gear is on, so everything around us is lit up in ghostly green.

  “Anybody see what happened?” I ask.

  No one answers.

  “Anybody see a chute?”

  Again, I’m met with silence.

  I say, “Garcia, you were behind Clayton when we made the jump. What did you see?”

  Garcia says, “Sorry, jefe, it went quick. You know how it is. Chute opened up and three corkscrews later, we’re on the ground.”

  Borozan says, “I got him. He’s alive.” Besides everything else she’s trained for, Borozan is our lead medic. She has an encrypted handheld device in her hand, and a small patch at the back of my neck itches. Attached there is a little sticky medical device with a low-range transmitter, allowing Borozan to track the medical status of me and everyone else in the group.

  “Alive?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says. “He’s about a hundred fifty meters to the northwest. Bearing 316 degrees.”

  All right, then, I think.

  No question, no debate, no argument. There’s the op, of course, but there are things greater than the op.

  “Okay,” I say. “Garcia, you take point. Let’s go get our guy.”

  More gunfire, this time closer than before.

  Sher whispers, “Welcome the fuck to Serbia.”

  Chapter 4

  It’s slow going because we’re in enemy territory, aren’t official combatants, and are outnumbered any way you look at it. But the other thing is that we’re not headed to Point Q or the compound, where Darko Latos is sleeping in a drunken and cocaine-induced stupor. Nope, we’re headed out in the wrong direction. I’m sure Dunton and his boss Hunley back in DC would be excreting the proverbial bricks if they knew.

  I have a satellite phone hanging off the side that allows me to call anywhere in the world, at any time. I suppose I could have given them a ring, but why bother? So we keep on moving.

  Garcia is on point and the rest of us spread out, me taking the rear, making sure no militias are out there, sneaking up on our six. The woods are a jumbled mess, but Garcia does a pretty good job of keeping us on track, until we run into a road.

  A nice paved road.

  I hate paved roads.

  If you trot across, you’re exposed, like a bug on a plate. If you trot across, an overhead asset—drone, aircraft, helicopter—can pick you right up. If you trot across, a fast-moving armored personnel carrier or squad vehicle can turn the corner and nail you with its headlights. Then follow that up with lots of incoming metal-jacketed rounds.

  I hate paved roads.

  We squat down, catch our breath. I hold up my right arm, make a quick circular motion with my right fist. My team gathers around me. I look up the road, Garcia looks across the road, Sher looks behind us, and Borozan looks down the road. We may be outnumbered and outgunned, but we’re doing a lot of looking.

  “Anything?” I whisper.

  No reply. That’s good. That means nobody sees anything of interest. I look up the road again. It’s starting to snow. Why not? Still no sounds save those of the woods at night, no lights, no motion, nothing.

  I make a quick chopping motion with my right hand, and we quickly scamper across the road and back into the woods. After checking our bearings, we move in a skirmish line, taking our time, knowing our guy is out there, but also knowing minutes are slipping away for us to get where we need to be to carry out our mission and get this op finished.

  There’s a slight pause as we take in a jumble of rocks. Borozan is next to me. She whispers, “About five meters away, if that. We’re practically on top of him.”

  “Roger that.”

  She leans in so much that her lips nearly touch my right ear. “Hear this is your last op. That you’re heading home. So where’s home?”

  I don’t move my head. “How the hell did you learn that?”

  “I’m the medic for this little Cub Scout pack, and word came down to forward your field medical records. Put two and two together. So where are you going when this is done?”

  “A quiet lake in New Hampshire.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not Massachusetts.
”

  “Am I invited?”

  “Only if you bring your bathing suit.”

  “Suppose I forget it?” she asks.

  “Then you’re definitely still invited.”

  She gives a sweet little chuckle and we move again, going up the rocks and brush and saplings, the forest still looking ghostly in green, and there’s something up ahead, dangling from a group of birch trees. We move in a semicircle, swing around, and I freeze, seeing what’s before us: Clayton’s body, his undeployed parachute still on his back. Garcia moves ahead.

  Borozan says in a low voice, “Telemetry says he’s still alive.”

  Garcia comes back. “Really?”

  Borozan says, “Yeah.”

  “Well, my personal telemetry—my two eyes in my goddamn head—says he’s dead.”

  “You—”

  “Go take a look, Borozan,” Garcia says bitterly. “Or does your little computer say a guy can still live with his femurs driven up into his chest?”

  Chapter 5

  What happens next is something you never see on the History Channel or Nova. We gather up Clayton’s faulty parachute, secure any gear that flew out when he hit the ground, and then do our best to conceal the gear and Clayton’s body. We don’t do a thorough job because we don’t have the time, and because freshly dug dirt is one hell of a signpost that something has just happened. No, we do what we can, and I punch in the coordinates of where we left him, so at some point when this war ends—eventually they all do, even if they last a hundred years—we’ll come back to take him home.

  There’s a deep sense of mission in what we do, in never leaving anyone behind in a battlefield, but in ops like this, you have to be realistic. I prefer to think it’s temporary, that at some point, he’ll be picked up and taken home to his beloved California.

  I do one more thing, though, which takes a notebook, pencil, and red-lensed light. I write the coordinates down on paper, just in case my own handheld gets lost, shot up, or otherwise compromised.

  Which, no surprise, is what is being urgently discussed when I rejoin my crew. Sher says to Borozan, “How the hell did that happen? What did you do? How come you kept on saying the poor bastard was alive?”

  Borozan says, “It has to be a software problem, or some glitch in the system. Swear to friggin’ Christ, do you think I wanted this to happen?”

  Sher says, “The poor guy got killed when he hit the ground like a goddamn meteor. And your handheld kept on telling you he was alive?”

  “That’s right,” she whispers back. “I’ve done a recheck, a diagnostics, and it still says—”

  “Cut it out,” I say. “Too much chatter, and it’s not helping the situation. Enough.”

  Garcia whispers something in Spanish and I ignore him. I say, “Time to head back, time to hook up with Alex, time to visit Darko Latos and give him the best wishes of the United States. Got it?”

  Garcia says, “Got it, jefe, but what pisses me off is because of Borozan’s little piece of Japanese shit over there, we’ve lost an hour, looking for a—no disrespect—a dead man.”

  “It happens,” I say. “Now, all of you, stow it. Back to work.”

  So we head out, moving quietly back down the stones and dirt and through the brush, leaving behind the remains of our comrade in a bit of soil that, for the time being, will be part of the United States.

  I don’t dare rush my team, because rushing leads to increased noise, increased visibility, and other chances of being discovered. But we do press on and then we’re back to that same damn road, and we line up, and look up and down, back and forth, and I’m about to wave us all forward when I catch the tiniest little flicker out of the corner of my eye. I motion to everyone to flatten and freeze. There’s just the slightest rustle as my team moves. I keep my head in a position that lets me see what’s coming.

  A glow at the end of the road expands and expands and then grows brighter.

  Approaching headlights.

  The sound of engines.

  A four-vehicle convoy roars by, led by a tracked BVP M-80 infantry fighting vehicle, which can carry a load of six infantrymen—eight if you really squeeze it. It’s armed with a 20mm cannon and a 7.62mm machine gun. Quickly following are two black Toyota pickup trucks—for some ungodly reason the vehicle of choice for insurgents around the world—with their rear beds packed with either regular Serb troops or one of the various paramilitary units that have sprung up like poison mushrooms in this fetid environment. Right behind the two pickup trucks is a four-wheeled armored personnel carrier—a BOV—with its own 7.62mm machine gun mounted on top. The falling snowflakes dance innocently in the harsh glow of the headlights.

  The vehicles disappear down the road and I wait, and wait some more, and when my watch tells me it’s been fifteen minutes, I get up and move my guys across and into the relative safety of the woods.

  Didn’t I say I hate paved roads?

  Yeah.

  Chapter 6

  We move forward, picking up a little time by skirting the outcropping of rocks and boulders that had been our drop zone. I refuse to think of Clayton, not because I’m a coldhearted bastard (which I’ve been accused of before) but because I need to be fully focused on the mission if we want to survive. Sometime down the road, I will mourn him both alone and with this group and others, and there will be lots of booze and jokes and stories, most of which will begin with this phrase: “So you won’t believe what me and Clayton did next…” And then there’ll be more drinking, and some glass-breaking and maybe a scuffle or two.

  But not now. All thoughts of Clayton are put in a secure box and placed on a shelf somewhere in the back of my mind, a shelf that’s awfully damn crowded.

  About an hour after we left that damned road behind, I hole up for a quick rest and to double-check our coordinates. I don’t let on, but I’m concerned about what happened to Borozan’s device, the one that gave her faulty data. Stuff like that’s not supposed to happen. So while we huddle in a quiet circle in the middle of the dark forest, I recheck our GPS coordinates, and I also insist on a backup check with topo maps of this hilly area and our compasses.

  It all checks out. It’s 0110 hours and we’re on track. We’re supposed to meet up with our guide Alex at 0200 hours at Point Q, and we have fifty minutes to cross terrain that should only take us thirty minutes to cover.

  I whisper, “All right, saddle up,” and that’s when I hear the noise.

  I freeze, and my team freezes with me.

  The wind-driven snow shifts and the noise gets louder. Growling of engines. Lots of them.

  Garcia says, “What do you think, jefe?”

  “Might be an armored outfit, or just a transport unit,” I say, shifting around so I can hear better.

  “Yeah,” Borozan says.

  The noise gets louder and then dims a bit, like it’s taking a pause.

  I stand up. “We’re going to check it out.”

  Sher says, “Boss, do we have the time?”

  “We do,” I say. “If there’s an armored company over there getting ready to patrol this area, I want to know that now, not later. We move.”

  I sense their reluctance, but we spread out in our line, moving but taking care. I have an overly curious nature that’s been criticized lots of times, but that curiosity has saved my ass and many others’ over the years. There’s something going on over there on our left flank, and I want to know what’s what before proceeding.

  The noises grow louder and then dim, and twice I hear yelling. At some point, we note bright lights have been switched on, so we go to ground, pure belly and elbow work, moving even slower. Now the lights are so bright I lift up my NVGs, and through the thin grass, some low bushes, and the snow that’s fallen, I take in what’s in front of us.

  We’re on a slight rise, above a small strip of bare field, and beyond that is a soccer pitch, with rows of wooden spectator seats on either side. There’s a waist-high chain-link fence surrounding the soccer fiel
d, and its floodlights are on. At the near end is a cluster of soldiers and paramilitary, and the typical Toyota pickup trucks and two tracked transport vehicles.

  At the far end, a yellow Volvo excavator is at rest. Deep trenches now scar the once pristine green soccer field.

  Sher nudges me. At the right there’s an access road to the soccer field, going past some low-slung buildings—locker rooms? refreshment stands?—and, trundling up the road like they’re on a holiday, three municipal buses. They drive through an opening cut in the fencing and line up. They have LASTA inscribed on the side, and they’re blue on the top and blue on the bottom, with a wide white stripe going across the middle.

  The doors slide open.

  Nobody comes out.

  More yelling, shouting.

  Some armed men go into the buses, and people are shoved out, mostly young men, with some older men sprinkled here and there. They’re forced into a line, and then marched up to the trenches, their shaking hands held high. Shoving, pushing and it’s a complicated mess for a few minutes. Two older men drop to their knees, holding up their hands, beseeching, and they’re roughly pulled up and shoved back into line.

  Two of the Toyota pickup trucks go out to the field and circle around.

  The fire from the automatic weapons builds to a continuous roar. One row and then another of the men are chopped down like a thick line of wheat meeting an invisible scythe. The machine-gun fire stops.

  Armed men go along the side of the trenches, AK-47s in hand. Occasionally, they stop.

  Pop. Pop-pop. Pop.

  The wounded are finished off.

  The three buses amble off the field. As they go out the access road, two more municipal buses are heading toward the killing ground. The buses flash their headlights at each other and exchange cheery horn blasts.